I must admit I have never figured this out. As a young married woman I was enamored of journal keeping, but those who kept journals did so for their own enlightenment and for record keeping. The journal was never a public document. In an age when paper was scarce and expensive, tiny books were crammed with information: the daily weather, the money made from the sale of six eggs, how much was spun that day, the health of the livestock and on and on with the details of daily life. When every scrap of empty space was filled, the journal was stuck away somewhere and a new one started. Today those journals provide a window into the economic life, but seldom the emotional life of their writers.Somewhere is a paperback document that chronicles my rage at the washing machine and a couple of months' worth of nonsense that seemed important at the time.I read Julie and Julia by Julie Powel, and saw the movie. It was then, and still is, amazing to me that any ordinary person could have something to say that the world couldn't wait to gobble up.I have been blogging now off and on for several years. I have a weekly short piece on Goodreads and was a regular blogger for Writers Who Kill for over a year. I don't think I had a very big audience. My audience is for my fiction, not my self- indulgent ramblings.So here I am again with my own blog.There has to be a reason I am doing this. Well there are several, and few if any have to do with my audience.It grounds me in a weekly writing routine.It give me a deadline to work to.It give me a way to explore my motivation and inspiration.It offers a chance to write non-fiction.It's kind of like writing a letter home, to keep those I care about updated on my doings.But that never answers the questions: why do you read blogs? What can I say that would interest you enough to keep you reading?Do you want to know how a farm was run in the 1780s? Do you want to know why I knit but seldom spin? Do you want to know how my work at a museum turns up in my fiction? Do you want to know how I get the right words in the right order onto the paper? Do you want to know about my work with other writers of historical fiction to make sure the manuscripts out there are as good as they can be?What can I say here that will satisfy both me and you?

Whenever I meet someone who tells me they want to be a writer, my first question is always, "what do you read?"The response can be anything from an out-pouring of favorite books and how they relate to the intended writing to a deer in the headlights look and "Read? I said I wanted to write, not read."I truly believe a writer needs to be a reader.Taking my own advice, I began to think about how my reading has changed over the years. In grade school I read mostly horse stories. I knew back then I wanted to write, and I thought my future was with horses and I was partly right. Grandma Whitney gave me a Marguerite Henry book for each birthday and Christmas until there were none left to give.My father suggested Will James with the idea that I might later graduate to William James. I did, but not for many years. I never read a single Nancy Drew.In High School I found Sherlock Holmes, first in English Lit, and then tucked into a book case at our summer home. Every year I prepared an elaborate vacation reading list. The Three Musketeers, Edmond Dante and even Alice and the White Rabbit became my summer companions. I read a bit of modern literature as well. Exodus came out when I was in high school and it took me nearly the whole summer to digest it. I filled in the spaces when I had to put it down with Thoreau and Emerson.One year I tried Moby Dick. I might have finished it that first summer but my mother told me I was laughing too hard and the book wasn't funny. Well in fact it is. I have been reading it ever since. I have yet to get to the end. I think it is my guilty pleasure. I know the story so I can pick it up at any place and read a bit. I have a copy on my computer and a print book on the floor by my reading chair. I hope I never finish it.I was in college before I discovered the William James my father had spoken of. As a Psych major, I ran across him in my nonfiction reading. At the same time my boyfriend was taking American Lit, and he introduced me to William’s brother Henry. The James boys became a staple of my reading and writing life. As did my boyfriend.It was a biography of the James family that propelled me into writing. I had been dabbling in fan fiction, mostly about the TV shows I watched, “Wild Wild West” and “Star Trek.” What I am about to tell you is a secret, so don't pass it on: I had developed a character called Gridunza Moss, the niece of a senator from New Hampshire. She was a feisty lady who was half government agent, half Cambridge intellectual. It was years before Gridunza became Emily Lothorp Lawrence, my first real home grown character.About the time Gridunza was turning into something more significant, I found that one of my graduate school professors had turned Hosea Ballou (look it up) into a plausible detective. He was the first published mystery fiction writer I knew.Now I read mostly detective fiction by people I know and nonfiction background for my own writing. I love research.What do you read?

Author

The best advice anyone gave me about writing historicals was that you need to experience what you are writing about. The result has been not only more believable settings but a wonderful job teaching history to kids at living history museums.